Inle lake Princess Resort is a special place right on the edge of a very peaceful arm of the lake. It was such a delightful place to just ‘be’ that I decided to forgo the next day of exploration in favour of a quiet day in the gardens of the hotel – and I had a massage! So good.

Individual cottages are spread out along the waterfront. Ours was the very last cottage meaning that we were about a kilometre from the central area with reception and restaurant. But the walk was delightful with water on both sides of the long peninsular like dyke on which the cottages were built.

Along the way there was always someone to stop and chat to – even in sign language. We stopped to say thank you to these lady gardeners who make the gardens a delight. Their wheelbarrow was a wooden dray they pulled along with them.

The gardeners keep the lily pond in good condition, using one of the local dug out boats to negotiate the weeds.

The weeds were taken out and added to the field that lay between the hotel and the village. In this way, arable land is added to the village fields. A stand of corn was growing in the field while we were there. All the vegetables we tasted were really very good.

The deck is a great place to watch boats go by and in the early morning the reflections were a delight. No boats are permitted to use engines in this zone so it’s all very peaceful. This long tail boat was coming in to the hotel dock to pick up guests for a day out on the lake – hence the blue chairs.

Before dinner at night, we enjoyed a wine tasting in the “wine cave”. A long boat formed the table. The ceiling was painted with murals and the walls were just clay with holes to hold the wine bottles.

These marionette puppets were used as decorations in the wine cave. We’ll talk more of the importance of puppets in Burmese culture later, but these puppets are just decorative because they have golden faces instead of white as in the traditional “working puppets”.

And when we’d had a delicious dinner and wandered back to our room, there was the bed ready for us, draped in a mosquito net, even though we hadn’t seen any of those pesky little insects. Still this is a malaria area so it was good not to take any risks.

And that was my day at the hotel. David’s day of exploring will be covered in the next episode of this armchair travelogue.

I woke up in the delightful small town of Tasiilaq. Where was I? Greenland. And I was looking forward very much to the planned cruise through the icebergs along a couple of the Fjords.

For some reason, unknown even to me, I’d had the idea that this cruise would be for just a couple of hours, at the most, in a Zodiac-type boat – shades of the same activity we had done when in the Antarctic. But no. We were to go out again in the same cruiser that brought us to the hotel – and the cruise would last for eight hours. One of our group decided she could not manage for so long on a boat, and so there were only the three of us plus the crew of two.

As we left the dock and looked back I was reminded of the colourful small houses in the north of Norway. These are all ‘flat-pack’ construction kit houses which have to brought in by boat. Similar houses, different colours.

On the way up the Fjord,we were entranced by the size and majesty of the icebergs. This one estimated to be the equivalent of 6 stories high. And that was only a fraction, about a ninth, of the iceberg that we could see – the rest, and by far the largest section, is under water.

The settlement of Qernertivartivit is a permanent home to only around 100 people. It must be a hard, hard life here – extremely hard! We spent an hour wandering around the houses and the only small store, owned by the same company which owns the two shops in Tasiilaq.

They say a picture tells a thousand words – there’s a story to be told about this house. I wonder what happened.

I hoped that people who owned this house hadn’t been burned or injured. If they did, they would have had to use the helicopter to be evacuated. There is a helipad marked out on a flat piece of ground at the far end of the village where some supplies are brought in during the winter and for emergency evacuations.

And if they had perished in the blaze, or for that matter, when any of the inhabitants dies, they have to be buried in a very rocky cemetery. The ground is so hard and rocky that it is impossible to bury a body under the ground, so rocks and sods of moss are used as a covering. When we visited the cemetery we saw the odd bone exposed.

From this vantage point we saw across the bogs filled with cotton grass, across the ice filled waters, and look up the fjord to where all the ice was coming from. There are a couple of glaciers here that empty into the head of the fjord. The whole area was jam packed with bits of ice, some of the bigger ones we could hear creaking and crashing as they split apart.

No matter where we walked on this small island, the views were spectacular. We would have to make our way through those ice chunks when we returned to the boat to continue the cruise. That, I was looking forward to.

Apart from the great drifts of snowy white cotton grass, there was the odd late summer plant still showing its colours like this pink sea-side Thrift.

All too soon, our hour on the island and in this small settlement was up and we made our way back to the boat for the next part of our fiord cruise – and that will be the subject of the next musings. D

I did not look forward to leaving this idyllic location to go on the long, all day drive to Gulmarg with D and Mr B. That, I reasoned, would have involved a lot of loud talking by Mr B., a long and bumpy road trip, a rather long walk or a horse ride and a ride up a gondola that would go too high for me to be able to breathe properly. And who knew where the ‘loo’ stops would be. That important part of daily planning did not seem to be on Mr B’s list of considerations at all. So I wisely decided to stay on the boat and enjoy the beauty that was right there, all around me. I had the houseboat to myself on a glorious sunny morning; life was indeed good. Not only was the view delightful but there were lots of birds to watch.

A lone heron kept me company. He stood on one of the mooring ropes, quietly gazing at the view, just as I was doing.

A magnificent eagle, its call like that of a ‘whistling kite’, soared backwards and forwards across the water in front of the house boat. At times he seemed to be moving and gliding in perfect time with the Mozart piano concerto that I was enjoying through my headphones.

A black and white kingfisher fished from a perch on the next houseboat. It flew high above the water, flapped its wings at a great rate as it hovered before darting straight down into the water for its catch.

A tiny bright blue kingfisher darted back and forth as it skimmed the water for food.

A large group of pigeons cooed from the roof of the next houseboat.

Small ducks dabbled happily in the weeds that are beginning to choke the lake front.

And of course there were a few hawkers that I had to dissuade from trying to sell me their wares.

And out on the lake there were a few ‘shikaras’, perfectly reflected in the still waters.

…

That was my morning. Perfect.

.

And it seemed that it was perfect for others, too.

One or two shikaras glided over the water – and the guests on board seemed to be very relaxed.

This local was off to do a spot of fishing – but he was not in a hurry.

Nothing was moving – the reflections were perfect.

The sun was warm; the whole scene was soporific; I began to nod off to sleep.

I had not had a good night’s sleep. This was catch up time. Not long after we had gone to bed, the mosquitoes flew in – and they would not be caught! Then, during the night, the light that we had left on in the ‘loo’ area had gone off and not long after that so did all the electricity… and all the outside security lights. It was very, very dark which is not a problem until nature calls and a visit to the ‘loo’ becomes essential. Now going to the loo in the middle of a very dark night in a strange place is always a bit of an obstacle course, but this adventure included a couple of steps. Groping in the dark, I finally found the loo and on lowering myself, as we women have to do, I discovered that the loo seat was no longer attached to anything. It slid around all over the place and ‘bit my bum’- not nice when your need is by now urgent! Getting back to bed was another ‘bumping into things’ adventure. And just when I finally got to sleep, the dawn ‘call to prayer’ began – very loud and very long. I know. I know – I was in India. One expects these things. It’s how it is.

Both loos and electricity are interesting facets of houseboat living. Electricity seemed to be ‘stolen’ from the mains power by many of the houseboats. How? Simple really! One end of a stiff, plastic coated, copper wire is bared and then bent into a hook. This is thrown at the live wire and, when it hooks, hey presto, the house boat has electricity! Of course this isn’t done in front of guests but the evidence is there for all to see. When an inspector comes lurking, the wire is unhooked and hey presto, the lights go out! No more electricity. We also discovered to our dismay that the loos were not connected to anything at all – except the lake beneath the boat! We wondered what the e.coli count would be – off the scale perhaps!

I was wakened from my nap for lunch by Majid who had made me a sandwich and yet another cup of tea. As we sat and chatted for awhile, I realised that the house boat lounge where he slept with its carved tables and chairs and tapestries on the wall was a far cry from the home he had left behind in his small hill village, 100 kms away. He returns home for only four days a month. He’s working on the houseboat to support his wife and three small children as well as his sick brother and his wife and their two children. The family all live together in one small house in a village of about 500 people. The two women grow some vegetables and a little rice for the family’s food. It’s real subsistence, survival living.

As we talked, the local grocery shikara came by. Majid told me that these men live on their craft – it’s their way of life.

And then, as we chatted, my idyllic day took a turn for the worse – the peace was shattered. A couple of shikaras arrived with a total of ten new guests, a group of Indian friends. Two were to sleep on our houseboat, and four each on the boats on either side. For some reason, not at all clear to me or to Majid, they all decided to congregate on our boat. Perhaps it was because ours was the middle boat. Without so much as a nod in my direction, they simply took over the front deck and the lounge room and made me feel like I might as well be a fly on the wall. The chatter and laughter was loud – happy, yes – but they certainly made no effort to include me in any way whatsoever. I retreated to our bedroom. With no good book to read, no internet connection and no human interaction possible, the time went by very slowly. If I was to be on my own during the day, this was just not going to work. I would have to move and leave the houseboat to the others.

I thought it would be best to move to the Srinagar LaLit Hotel where at least I’d be land based with a garden to walk in. When David came back from his long day out in the countryside, he’d already decided that a move was our best option and had made arrangements with the hotel. I was sorry to leave the houseboat and Majid but not the least bit sorry to leave the noisy new visitors. We went to the peace and quiet of the Lalit Hotel – and had a very good night’s sleep!